Jane Louise

Interesting and scary to say the least weathership. Thank goodness for the gin. Thank you for sharing.

Hi all, I though it would be interesting to discuss the ins and outs of flying through a thunderstorm or even around it in that case! I've found some snippets from various sources from the internet as shown below. My question is: Has anybody ever observed a storm whilst flying in a airplane.If so what was it like to experience this? Here are the snippets. ------------------------------------------------- It is unpleasant at best, dangerous at worst, to fly aircraft through thunderstorms, as lightning, hail, severe turbulence, vigorous updraughts and strong downdraughts all occur inside them. An aircraft can be wrecked by flying from a powerful updraught into an adjoining downdraught. Even the biggest of aircraft can be flung about the sky by the violent winds of vigorous cumulonimbus clouds. Pilots therefore try to fly around such clouds if they can. As the clouds are typically only 10-12 km across, this is normally possible. Although passengers and crew may see a flash and hear a loud noise if lightning strikes their plane, nothing serious should happen because of the careful lightning protection engineered into the aircraft and its sensitive components. Initially, the lightning will attach to an extremity such as the nose or wing tip. The airplane then flies through the lightning flash, which reattaches itself to the fuselage at other locations while the airplane is in the electric "circuit" between the cloud regions of opposite polarity. The current will travel through the conductive exterior skin and structures of the aircraft and exit off some other extremity, such as the tail. Pilots occasionally report temporary flickering of lights or short-lived interference with instruments. Hail competes with turbulence as the greatest thunderstorm hazard to aircraft. Supercooled drops above the freezing level begin to freeze. Once a drop has frozen, other drops latch on and freeze to it, so the hailstone grows - sometimes into a huge iceball. Large hail occurs with severe thunderstorms usually built to great heights. Eventually the hailstones fall, possibly some distance from the storm core. Hail has been observed in clear air several miles from the parent thunderstorm. As hailstones fall through the melting level, they begin to melt, and precipitation may reach the ground as either hail or rain. Rain at the surface does not mean the absence of hail aloft. You should anticipate possible hail with any thunderstorm, especially beneath the anvil of a large cumulonimbus. Hailstones larger than one-half inch in diameter can significantly damage an aircraft in a few seconds. Turbulence within even an isolated thunderstorm can be severe enough to exceed the structural integrity of an aircraft. Another aviation rule of thumb is that hazardous turbulence can be found in all thunderstorms. The strongest turbulence occurs with the shear between updrafts and downdrafts, but turbulence has been encountered thousands of feet above a storm and up to 20 miles laterally from a storm. Airborne weather radar has generally not yet progressed to the point where it can "see" turbulence, but it can see the severity of the thunderstorm that will inevitably mean turbulence. Expect one with the other ----------------------------------------- And here's a pilots instructions on the Do's and don'ts of thunderstorm flying. ----------------------------------------- 1. Don't land or take off in the face of an approaching thunderstorm. A sudden wind shift or low level turbulence could cause loss of control. 2. Don't attempt to fly under a thunderstorm even if you can see through to the other side. Turbulence under the storm could be disastrous. 3. Don't try to circumnavigate thunderstorms covering 6/10 of an area or more either visually or by airborne radar. 4. Don't fly without airborne radar into a cloud mass containing scattered embedded thunderstorms. Scattered thunderstorms not embedded usually can be visually circumnavigated. 5. Do avoid by at least 20 miles any thunderstorm identified as severe or giving an intense radar echo. This is especially true under the anvil of a large cumulonimbus. 6. Do clear the top of a known or suspected severe thunderstorm by at least 1,000 feet altitude for each 10 knots of wind speed at the cloud top. This would exceed the altitude capability of most aircraft. 7. Do remember that vivid and frequent lightning indicates a severe thunderstorm. 8. Do regard as severe any thunderstorm with tops 35,000 feet or higher whether the top is visually sighted or determined by radar.

All great posts thank you. I agree what most have said regards severe weather there is always a threat of every day dangers anyway no matter what we do . And weather is a natural phenomena and there's nothing we can do about it but to be cautious and use common- sense especially if needing to go out in it etc . I think Liam, you've practically summed up what I would of said.

Very nice Robbie. We had a beautiful sunset here in Gloucestershire yesterday evening. I must upload my pics at some point. The sunset this evening wasn't as good as yesterday evenings but either way it was nice to see. I love these winter sunsets especially after a gorgeous sunny day.

In reference to my last post : Flowers in bloom late in Autumn indicate a bad winter. It's now January 11th and there's no sign of cold here yet! Still a couple of months to go! A weekend of frost is on the cards but for how long will this last? And where is our bad winter. Will I have spoken to soon! time will tell of course.

Hi username , Welcome to Netweather. Could you please pop your location in your profile settings. Thank you.

Meteorologists estimate that, at any given moment, some 1,800 thunderstorms are in progress over Earth's surface, and about 18 million a year around the world. It is estimated that approximately 100,000 to 125,000 thunderstorms occur in the United States each year. Of that total anywhere from 10 to 20 percent may be severe. The National Weather Service considers a thunderstorm severe if it produces hail at least three-quarters of an inch in diameter, winds of 58 mph or stronger, or a tornado. From 1996 to 2001, a total of 134,005 severe thunderstorms were recorded (not associated with tornadoes), an average of 19,144 annually. The frequency with which these giant generators of local weather occur, along with the quantity of energy they release and the variety of forms this energy can take, make thunderstorms great destroyers of life and property. Of the thousands of thunderstorms that strike the United States each year, only about 10–15% produce potentially dangerous hailstones. Hail-producing thunderstorms are most frequently found in eastern Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming (the city of Cheyenne, Wyoming, observes the most hailstorm days per year, about 8–10); such storms also develop in the western plains, the Midwest, and the Ohio Valley. Damage estimates from hailstorms alone reach up to nearly a billion dollars annually in the United States. The most costly single U.S. hailstorm struck on July 11, 1990, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and resulted in damages of $625 million. Golf-ball- and baseball-size hailstones pelted thousands of roofs, vehicles, windows, and other property. Hail also causes injuries, but rarely death. In fact, during the twentieth century, only three deaths were reportedly due to hail—one was a farmer in Lubbock, Texas, in 1930; an infant in Fort Collins, Colorado, July 30, 1979, and a 19-year old man struck by softball-size hail in Lake Worth, TX, on March 28, 2000. Injuries are also sparse, but more common. In the last full year of statistical hail data (2001) there were 32 hail injuries reported in the United States. http://www.weatherexplained.com/Vol-1/Thunderstorms.html

That'll be typical :blush: Just imagine if I went on the Netweather storm chase! (I will say no more) Lol

Some of the most powerful thunderstorms over the United States occur in the Midwest and the Southern states. These storms can produce large hail and powerful tornadoes. Thunderstorms are relatively uncommon along much of the West Coast of the United States, but they occur with greater frequency in the inland areas, particularly the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys of California. In spring and summer, they occur nearly daily in certain areas of the Rocky Mountains as part of the North American Monsoon regime. In the Northeast, storms take on similar characteristics and patterns as the Midwest, only less frequently and severely. During the summer, air-mass thunderstorms are an almost daily occurrence over central and southern parts of Florida. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderstorm Lol if that's the case I'll move there with you! :winky:

Interesting opinions thanks for sharing all!

Oh do keep us updated I'm certainly interested in the whereabouts of our long-lost storms. At the moment they seem to prefer the NE lol. Certainly will be interesting on all accounts!

Hi Lauren, I wish I had of kept diaries like you did. Why oh why can't we have those Spanish Plumes again I used to sit up all night , glued to the radars and biting my nails frantically willing them up my way Lol. Yes, those were the days!

Thank you all for sharing your reports. Sounds spectacular and quite scary. I suppose you could say the storms we observe in the UK are never anything like the storms observed abroad. The best storms I can recall here in England have always been the spanish plume types which as of late has been a rarity but when they did occur they certainly gave a good show and a couple were even quite frightening!

NASA Satellite Finds the World’s Most Intense Thunderstorms A summer thunderstorm often provides much-needed rainfall and heat wave relief, but others bring large hail, destructive winds, and tornadoes. Now with the help of NASA satellite data, scientists from the University of Utah and elsewhere are gaining insight into the distribution of such storms around much of the world. By using data from the NASA Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite, researchers identified the regions on Earth that experience the most intense thunderstorms. Their study was published in the August 2006 issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The strongest storms were found to occur east of the Andes Mountains in Argentina, where warm, humid air often collides with cooler, drier air, similar to storms that form east of the Rockies in the United States. Some of the most violent thunderstorms in the world are found in the part of the central United States known as “tornado alley,†where storms with large hail, destructive winds and tornadoes strike every year. Surprisingly, some semi-arid regions have powerful storms, including the southern fringes of the Sahara, northern Australia, and parts of the Indian subcontinent. In contrast, rainy areas such as western Amazonia and Southeast Asia experience frequent storms, but relatively few are severe. Northern Pakistan, Bangladesh, and parts of Central Africa also experience intense thunderstorms. “TRMM has given us the ability to extend local knowledge about storms to a near-global reach,†said lead author Edward Zipser, University of Utah, Salt Lake City. “In addition to containing the only precipitation radar in space, TRMM’s other instruments provide a powerful overlap of data that is extremely useful for studying storms.†The researchers examined global thunderstorm data supplied by TRMM from 1998-2004. To determine an individual storm’s intensity, they specifically examined the height of radar echoes, radiation temperature, and lightning flash rate, each measured by separate TRMM instruments. The study also confirmed previous findings. For example, the locations of the heaviest rainfall on Earth — usually in tropical oceans and along certain mountain slopes — rarely coincide with the regions of most intense storms. They also found that the strongest storms tend to occur over land, rather than over oceans. The intense storms that do develop over oceans usually occur in areas near land that favor storm motion from land to ocean. Examples include tropical oceans west of Central America and West Africa, and subtropical oceans east of the southeastern United States, South America, Australia and Africa. Many regions of the world also have a seasonal preference for strong storms, including spring and summer for the south-central United States, June-August in the Sahel, and March-May over the Ganges Plain and Bangladesh. Studying storms with satellite data began in the 1960s when researchers discovered that colder cloud top temperatures were linked to more intense storms. But later, scientists found that many storms of average intensity also reach very high altitudes, where colder temperatures are found. For a more accurate, quantitative description of a storm, radar, microwave, and lightning data are also needed to study a thunderstorm’s inner structure. “Prior to TRMM, we could only study individual storms that were captured by a ground-based radar or lightning network,†said co-author Daniel Cecil, University of Alabama-Huntsville, Huntsville, Ala. “Those instruments are not available in many places and trying to find an interesting storm that was simultaneously observed by a satellite required remarkable luck, but TRMM has been supplying a variety of measurements from individual storms around the world for nearly nine years now.†The instruments on TRMM provide data and precision that other satellites cannot. Its precipitation radar is unique because it measures the properties of a storm with high vertical resolution, helping scientists to identify the stronger rising air currents, or updrafts, in a thunderstorm. TRMM also has a lightning sensor, which identifies both cloud-to-ground and in-cloud lightning, and its microwave imager gives detailed information on the ice content within a storm, also related to the speed of updrafts. While each TRMM instrument measures different aspects of a storm, the researchers found that the data from each usually matched quite well, agreeing on the location and distribution of the strongest storms. “The results from this study help to quantify the differences in the type and intensity of thunderstorms that occur in different climate regimes around the world,†said Cecil. “The effects on the atmosphere of an intense, monstrous thunderstorm over Argentina or Oklahoma contrasts greatly with the effects from a more ordinary storm over the Amazon basin.†In the future, and as the dataset from TRMM continues to increase, these observations will be used to test whether computer models used for climate prediction and weather forecasting are accurately capturing the details of thunderstorms. If not, scientists will have the details necessary to build better, more realistic models that will aid meteorologists in providing more accurate forecasts. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) is a joint mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and is designed to monitor and study tropical rainfall. Mike Bettwy Goddard Space Flight Center http://unews.utah.ed...-thunderstorms/ What part of the world have you ever experienced intense storms? Of course I know the UK experiences nothing as powerful as the ones in the states and other countries but I'm sure there's somebody who may have a tale to tell of exciting storms whilst on holiday abroad. :-D

There has been quite a bit of damage here in Gloucestershire! One family here certainly had a lucky escape! Also heard there were fires in Lydney due to falling cables and fallen trees.Still quite windy here now. --------------------------- A FAMILY had a lucky escape when a tree crashed onto their Cheltenham property during stormy weather yesterday. A 70ft beech destroyed the Herbert family's carport, just yards from where young children were preparing for the day ahead in Hartlebury Way, Charlton Kings. http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/Massive-tree-crushes-carport-Gloucestershire-home/story-14323053-detail/story.html

Certainly a lot of potential for very strong wind gusts! Quite an active day in store. Time to batten down the hatches once again.

Slight risk of embedded thunderstorms tomorrow.Something to keep an eye on. Waiting for some more forecasts from, Nick F, Estofex etc. Slight Risk of Embedded Thunderstorms 06Z-15Z NW Eire, Central and Southern UK. Moderate Risk of Tornado Development UK as per red box below 09Z-15Z Exceptionally deep low 956 mb positioned west of Scotland moving east. Strong upper jet stream marginally diffluent supports off setting mean average cloud height to lower level updraft. A very dry rear inflow jet now showing up on both NMM and GFS models dropping down into the 800mb layer by the beginning of the upper portion of red box. At this point the cold front will truly become 'ana' by way of description. Some basic level of environmental instability is advected along the frontal boundary where cloud top are likely to reach mid levels at least. The mid level winds are then likely to lean the upper portion of cloud tops forward where precip will fall ever further outward toward the east. The likely development of a number of central precip cores will create irregularity along the squall and hence a number of bowing segments should develop by late morning. The breaks between these lines should allow for small enclosed rotations to occur and hence a moderate risk for tornadoes through this period is issued. In addition to this we may see some embedded sferic activity and severe convective gusts could occur in the region of 60kts plus. The risk for widespread damage may well become higher than the current media weather forecasting is predicting based on the aforesaid. Whilst UKMO Fax cart shows a late post frontal trough development, ATM I see some scope here for an immediate post frontal trough developing with no more than an hr or two time window. If this occurs within the dry incursion then there is a possibility for wind gusts to reach up to 73 knots locally. Certainly one to watch for. On this occasion the forecast helicity values will have little or no baring on the risk for tornadoes! Attached thumbnail(s) http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/index.php?/topic/88683-convective-outlooks-tues-3rd-jan-12/

We will get our snow soon , just you wait and see. Have a merry Christmas everyone. :smiliz19:

Just had a really heavy downpour here, more then I've seen all year! it's slowly moving east. Cheltenham watch out!!

My spring roses are still in bloom. Most roses usually bloom in late spring or early summer .

Even then Stu, probably nothing! :lol:

Happy Christmas everybody. :smiliz58:

What a lovely Christmas present it would be if it did have storms embedded Lol . There's always thundersnow when the snow does decide to arrive this winter and then there's spring and .............. fingers crossed for 2012 anyway lol :smiliz19:

There's a very big area of heavy rain near the Irish sea I think moving East! I wonder if it has any storms embedded in it. Fingers crossed for us storm enthuaists!

Too perfect in my case Aaron Lol. Would be lovely though!